Beijing
We started our trip a few days early in Beijing - I figured since we would have to fly through it anyways, might as well take advantage of it! The city is beautiful, and the history behind it makes it even more beautiful! The Beijing airport is so grand, and surprisingly clean, compared to the rest of the city. We did pretty much all the touristy things in about 2 days! It was exhausting but so worth it!
Pizza Hut is like, 4 star dining in China. Here is a supreme pizza with pigs in the blanket for the crust. Chinese people do not like tomato sauce for some reason.
Mutianyu Great Wall. I wish it wasn't so foggy (or is it smog?) I didn't get to see a whole lot of the Great Wall because the altitude was killing me, but they all look the same anyways!
Birds Nest and Watercube from a distance - not that impressive.
Summer Palace. The first few minutes were beautiful, but then everything started to look alike!
My teammate Kimberly, dreaming of a cheeseburger.
Tiananmen Square and Forbidden City. I think I was delirious at this point, I have no idea what anything was. It seemed like a neverending trek to get inside and people kept trying to speak Chinese to me. I think I turned around prematurely, because I never saw any of the cool stuff that Wikipedia says was inside the Palace :(
We walked around Qianmen a little bit, which was cool because it was a mixture of old and modern Beijing. Also saw these little goodies - I have no idea if people actually eat them or if its more of a novelty thing for tourists. But YUCK. and poor little bugs, getting skewered :( so sad.
B-town
After our little vacation in Beijing, we flew south, then took a 3 hour bus ride into B-town. Thank goodness I had my motion sickness patch, because roads over there are rough! The drive was beautiful though! This was my first glimpse of the countryside - the province was known for its beautiful landscape, and it did not disappoint!
This picture doesn't really do it justice, but huge mountains lined the roads, and there were rows and rows of mountains stretching beyond the horizons. It was so beautiful, especially coming from Texas!
We stayed at the Holiday Hotel (they actually spelled it Holiday Hoetl), where we slept on concrete beds with Funk the roach and a few of his friends. It was actually not bad, luckily we had A/C and a western toilet! It was about 650 RMB for one person for 2 weeks (a little less than USD$100). The electricity would only turn on if you were in the room and had the room card inserted in the slot, which I thought was such a good idea - less waste! How come we don't have that here in America?
This was the view from our room, the city park! This is basically everyone's backyard - where people do tai chi and exercise in the morning, where the kids play and the teenagers hang out.
Its also home to the cutest stools and benches! They have chairs and benches in the shape of pandas, hello kitties, gnomes, many many more - I don't know how asian people think of such cute things!!
The Training
We started our training Monday morning. Since the employees still had to work during the training, we had an early morning and an evening component. Originally, we were supposed to have 60+ students, but the Bank was hesitant because this was the first training, so they only signed up about half of that. It worked well though, because the class was small enough for us to be more intimate with them! Everyone was so friendly and so open to be learning, this was my first time teaching adults and even though it was tougher than teaching kids, it was definitely and unforgettable experience - its strange to feel so attached to people you've known for less than 2 weeks. Our class ( this was probably the nicest room we stayed in! I guess bank meeting rooms are nicer in China):
practicing their roleplays
This was the students after their final exam! Not everyone passed, but we still gave everyone a certificate of completion. They were all so happy to get their certificates! We also recorded our entire lesson and sang the songs for them on a CD. So somewhere in China, there are 30 CDs of me singing "Hello, How Are You?"
Unfortunately, I dont have a lot of pictures with my small group. I dont have any pictures of me teaching the class, they're all on my teammate's camera and she hasn't sent them over yet :(
Here are some videos of some of them singing. The songs are super lame, I know :)
Firefly
In addition to the training, I also worked and hung out at Firefly, a English-speaking coffee shop. It rained for most of the time we were there, but we were still able to hang out, and I met some awesome people. Most people there were able to speak English conversationally, and they all wanted to know about America culture - most of them had never eaten a hamburger before (or a han ba ba, as its called in Chinese)! Pictures of Firefly below.
More of the City
Some more pictures of the city, so you can have a better feel of what it was like.
Views of the whole city from the city monument, on a hill.
Typical street in the city
My favorite street in the city, I walked by here every day to training
the meat market
and right next to the meat market was the fruit stand!
This was our version of Starbucks, but instead of coffee, it was tea! My usual sweet iced jasmine tea was 2.5 RMB, which is about 37 cents. Such a culture shock to come back and have to pay $4 for a drink at Starbucks!!
This was our version of Starbucks, but instead of coffee, it was tea! My usual sweet iced jasmine tea was 2.5 RMB, which is about 37 cents. Such a culture shock to come back and have to pay $4 for a drink at Starbucks!!
me with my 3 favorite girls in b-town
Guilin/Yangshuo
Something I was really looking forward to on this trip was a little side trip we were planning - we were going to go into a village in the mountains, and meet some local villagers, as well as hold little English workshops for some of the school children. Let me stress again, I was really looking forward to this! I wanted to see their culture, and see how they lived outside of the city. Unfortunately - or fortunately, depending on how you look at it - there was so much rain going on at this time that there were flooding and landslides in much of the province. The village we were planning on going to was inaccessible until the rain subsided. Since we couldn't do what we had originally planned, we took a super short flight out to Guilin, a city renowned for its beauty. We were able to ask a young believer to come with us to act as a translator, and we had 2 days to hang out with her, talk to her about her new faith, her doubts, her hopes and dreams. It was meant to be a mini intense discipleship, but it just felt like we were old friends!
This was the first time she had ever traveled, and her first time on a plane! Her goal in life is to make enough money to take her parents to visit Beijing :)
floating down the Li River, it was so beautiful
This scenery is the shown on the 20 Yuan bill, but I couldn't find the exact spot where the picture was taken! I wish it was a bit sunnier that day so the reflection would show more.
Moon Hill. It was nearly 1000 steps to the top of the hill, and I nearly died on the way up there!
View from the top of the hill (in the hole of the mountain). The mountains dont even look real!
To be continued. Part II coming soon!!
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